UrBC, Yekaterinburg, March 4, 2019. Sverdlovsk Region’s public prosecution authorities uncovered a number of grave offenses in the civil service sector last year, their press service reports.

Following the public prosecutors’ reports, 22 officials from among Sverdlovsk Region’s power structures (including one Sverdlovsk Region Legislative Assembly deputy) got fired due to loss of trust; 10 deputies of local-level Dumas got removed before the end of their elected term.

The prosecution authorities also kept working to have the property of civil servants seized by the state in cases where the said servants could not prove their incomes had been sufficient to acquire the property in question. 27 investigations on civil sector workers’ spending behavior also took place; moreover, RUB 17.5m went to the national budget as forfeiture to the state relating to earlier suits.

Thanks to the authorities’ optimized coordination efforts, the number of identified bribe-related crimes rose from 469 in 2017 to 558 in 2018 (+19%); 50.5% of the cases were related to bribe taking; their number rose from 198 to 298. The number of cases where a verdict of guilty was returned (along with the forfeiture of the convicted offender’s property) went up from 50 to 105.